An employee has just raised a minor concern regarding health and safety in your workplace. However, they also walk off site and claim that they can’t be forced to work until it’s dealt with.
Does such a legal right exist?
Right to stop work
Employers are often forced to tackle situations that arise due to misconceptions about employees’ legal rights. One that often crops up relates to health and safety. Many employees think or are advised that they can, point-blank refuse to work whenever a health and safety issue or concern arises in their workplace and still be paid. In other words, it’s assumed that not only is there an extensive legal right here, the employee always calls the shots as to when it’s triggered.
So what is the legal position
Whilst a right does exist, it is not as clear cut. A legal right to stop work in certain circumstances is provided for by the Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999. However, Regulation 8 only allows for this if staff are exposed to “serious, imminent and unavoidable danger”. In other words, a situation must arise
What dangers qualify?
Even if these conditions are present, the right is only to stop work and evacuate to a place of safety, not for the employee to go home and put their feet up for the day. There’s no exhaustive list as to what dangers qualify, but the following are examples of how serious an event must be to come under Regulation 8: missing, broken or defective machine guarding (this can cause injury, amputation or death), collapsing structures, for example of a roof, wall, oor or other support, such as scaffolding and re/explosion risks.
What if staff challenge you?
But what should you do if you come up against an employee (or a group) who is threatening
to stop work, or has actually stopped working already, citing health and safety grounds?
Where any complaint about health and safety is made you should always investigate it – never dismiss it out of hand. When doing so, explain Regulation 8 to the employee(s) concerned but put the onus on them to explain why they see the health and safety issue as being a “serious, imminent and unavoidable danger” that permits them to stop working. If there is a minor problem, be seen to deal with it. This shows that you take your legal responsibilities seriously. If however, you decide that no further action is necessary, explain why this is; you don’t want to deter employees from raising genuine problems in future. Even if your workplace is low risk, you should still have clear emergency procedures and a robust health and safety policy in place which all staff are fully briefed on. Your approach only needs to be proportionate to your size and business type.
For any further advice or information please contact the team here at SFB Consulting. Our offices are based in Bishop’s Stortford and London, but we offer our services and consultancy UK wide.
T:01279 874 676